The Grog

I hate that beam with a burning firey passion.

My best suggestion is to call the corner it starts from, NE SW and so, and the target. That will usually provide you with the info you need to dodge if it comes quick. The problem is that the beams deviate a bit, so there is never a guaranteed safespot, and sometimes he'll start a beam way too close to dodge.

Dodging beams sucks. Dodging beams at 5 FPS with your camera zoomed in because you won't get more than 1 otherwise sucks more. I hate Illidan.

 

Clandestine

There's no deviation with the lazers. There are exactly 6 different lazers that can happen. I've seen a diagram with it, it might be earlier in this thread.

edit: There might actually be 8 paths for the lazer, I can't remember for sure whether the East/West lazers can go both north and south or only one direction in specific.

 

Dokos

n -> sw
n -> se

s -> ne
s -> nw

in any direction.

 

D4vE

The beams always go through the middle ring, 50% continuously pass through it while 2x 25% are placed on the outer ring (I hope this was verbalized understandable). We kinda defined the "middle ring" as a "danger zone", where you don't want to spend much time tanking the elemental. Thus I try to tank the flames mostly on the outer ring, usually I kite them there in a half circle, placing the flame patches as close to each other as possible.
When I reach the end of the "safe zone", I turn around, run through the middle ring, placing max 1 flame patch there, and start the kiting route on the outer ring again. If done right, the flame patches from the last round just vanish when you approach the next round and you safely can watch the blue beam pass by in the middle ring while tanking the flame on the outer ring.

The only "oh shit" moment happens, when the beam spawns directly behind you on the outer ring, then you have to be either quick changing position to the middle ring, or sit it out in a flame patch with SW.

 

dr_AllCOM3

The beams are like this.

Two go very far into the center, that's where melees die sometimes .

 

Buiden

This is where four possible beams come from but there are many, many more angles for them to take.

From our experiences the beams can spawn anywhere along the north or south axis. If they spawn on the east half they go east, if they spawn on the west half, they go west. The beams then always create a tangent to the circle from where they spawn.

Do it enough times and you'll see some angles you didn't think could happen and your "Safe spots" aren't so safe anymore!

 

Barcode Too

I recently made an instructional video for a couple of our tanks that had not yet done the fight as well as some other people outside of our guild. It has a voice narration by me explaining some of what i think are the important elements of the phase. I make a few mistakes in it such as shield blocking a couple of times (hotkey issue mainly as i have shield block bound to 3 different keys) for no reason but it really has no impact on the outcome or even my threat.

I hope it helps at least some of you, even though there are a couple things i missed i think i got most of the pertinent information in it, if not clumsily.

Enjoy, and good luck.

Illidan_P2_Instructional.wmv - FileFront.com

 

Filmnio

Is the flames damage all magic? Does AC matter at all?

 

TheDooft

It's 100% magic (fire), AC doesn't matter. Eye blast is shadow direct damage but it burn in fire after.

 

kingkaos

Can I drop totems yet? Patch is here and I dont see any blatant mention in the notes.

 

Buiden

My only criticism is that you make reference, or at least imply that your position relative to the other tank is even remotely important, when it is in fact not. Only your position relative to the blade on the ground matters.

Other than that really good video mostly because its a pretty slow phase 2 (compared to use at least, usually have 1 ele down in 1 minute) so it shows some really nice control. Not sure if you did voice over after the fraps or not, but staying as calm as you were is really important for tanks to do, just keep cool and all will be well.

Side note, I found out last night one thing that causes charges that people should be aware of. Since i'm the Illidan tank I don't have a whole lot to do in phase 2 besides clean up the blue beams and make other calls. For people who haven't figured it out, each blade has a separate aura that pulses on an interval. When you lose the aura you are not immune to charge, you otherwise are. So what I noticed is that if you quickly switch from 1 side to the other it is possible to lose aura before the other blade applies you a new one, thus making the elemental charge you. So, if you are going to switch sides it is reccomended that you go slowly, or stand in the overlapped aura area for 1-2 seconds before you do it. This is very reproducible with intercept/intervene from 1 side to the other.

 

Barcode Too

Actually, they will charge if a player is too far away from them (thats how blizzard keeps raiders inside grating and thus susceptible to the beams and splash fireball damage). Maybe in the video i wasn't clear about this, but what i meant was that you want to make sure you dont go too far away from the other flame or it will charge. I haven't seen much evidence that there's a pulse effect other than just pulling them (the flame) too far from the blade. Also, this doesn't offer much explanation as to the two different types of charge that they do.

If you watch the really old last resort video you can watch kerp standing in what the diagrams on this forum would call a "bad zone" the entire phase. Only after the opposite flame is pulled to the farthest end does he get charged and only once, which suggests to me that it something to do with the raiders distance from the flames as well as the flames distance from the blade.

Either way, you want to keep your path about like the video as we haven't had any issues since our first kill

 

Buiden

Yeah that is very untrue, go ahead and try it but as long as you are within 20 yards of a BLADE you cannot be charged -- it has nothing to do with where the elementals are.

 

◊ Praetorian

If any brave souls try this tonight, I'd love to hear about it as well.

 

Buiden

You can always drop them in the small area where the blade auras overlap so if they charge they at least don't enrage. (Dead center of the grate)

 

◊ Caffeine

Don't you risk getting a Flame Blast on the raid during the charge then?

 

Buiden

Definitely. I'm just saying if you are going to take the risk of trying it out you might as well try to keep them from enraging in the process... Of course we're only talking about 10 minutes and 1 wipe to figure this out anyway so it isn't a big deal.

On another note I wouldn't be surprised to see spell reflect not killing the blue fire anymore, it always struck me as a bug.

 

◊ Quigon

We've dropped totems from day 1. I don't see the big deal. The melee can "get behind" any breaths. Just drop them smartly.

 

Natural

Dropped tons of totems tonight to test it out. No charges. Looks fixed.

 

Trouble

Also confirming no charges on totems.

 

csi

same, we've always just kept the totems outside the center grate. They've never caused wipes.

 

Thezilch

Third? There appeared to be no charges, last night, between four pulls of epic failures. :p

 

Buiden

We had a super melee heavy group last night (4 rogues 2 dps war enhancement shammy feral druid) and without being able to clean up the blue beams made phase 2 take a LOT longer than previous. Kind of makes me miss that bug!

 

woo-haa

Since this has become somewhat a general Illidan thread I wanted to ask about the threat list in P3 and P4. Where does the threat reset? Does he have a threat list in his RP phase (lying on floor phase)? Our P4 tank only had aggro at the start of P4 once in the 5 or 6 times we made it so far.

 

◊ Praetorian

We transition to p4 during his humanoid phase. By all appearances he preserves his aggro list if you do it this way. He never budges from the MT.